Questions about city tree survival following human extinction?

T

Tbonesaredelicious

Location
Baltimore
I'm having a hard time finding information on this, so I came here.
My main question is number 1. Any insight or advice pointing towards literature would be helpful.
1) If everyone died tomorrow, would the average 10 year old tree in a 6*6 opening, surrounded by concrete and asphalt surfaces, survive, and eventually thrive? What about a 20, 30 or 40 year old tree?
2) Why or why not?
3) What does a mature city tree's root system look like?(this might be too vague, because I know it depends on a lot of variables)
4) Where does said mature city tree(with inner city percentages of immediately surrounding impervious surfaces) get enough water and, more importantly, nutrients?

Thanks for any help!
 
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Writing a post apocalyptic novel? I won't help you! That's my idea.

Mostly kidding. I don't know any real answers to your questions, but I suspect that the roots would wreck the impervious surfaces, making them...pervious.
Mainly , trees die i think because of people. Directly or indirectly. With pervious surfaces everywhere and nobody touching trees, I suspect they would thrive!
 
JontreeHI said:
Writing a post apocalyptic novel? I won't help you! That's my idea.

Mostly kidding. I don't know any real answers to your questions, but I suspect that the roots would wreck the impervious surfaces, making them...pervious.
Mainly , trees die i think because of people. Directly or indirectly. With pervious surfaces everywhere and nobody touching trees, I suspect they would thrive!
Click to expand...
Great post Jon. There's room for many a post apocalypse novel!

I have thought quite a bit about the interesting things that would happen if we were to vanish, including city trees. They would take over no doubt. My town would be a forest of Siberian Elms in no less than 20 years.
 
There have been a couple of decent documentary type shows that covered the subject quite well. Because cities (even modern ones) have been abandoned, there's good physical evidence. The cities crumble and fall apart surprisingly fast without the constant maintenance we take for granted. Doesn't take long before you can barely tell they were there.
The city trees and landscaping will do fine, mostly because of what's been said, already... the concrete doesn't last for very long. One little crack, and the weeds move in and they do a good job of making the cracks bigger and undermining the concrete until a few years of frost heave and hydrostatic pressure start to break it up more.
Then the pigs and dogs go feral, and we're off to the races. A few more centuries and the pigs are speaking Latin and flying airplanes.
 
I'm thinking that as soon as the zombies run out of brains, they'll probably adapt to eating trees. Since trees aren't fast enough to out-run even a shuffling zombie, one could logically assume that city trees would eventually be overtaken and consumed by zombies.
 
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